Maze
Maze was a Saiyan warrior and galactic traveler, the son of two survivors of the Genocide of the Saiyans. Raised by his father Cobb, a former member of the Saiyan Royal Guard, Maze took up his father's mantle by vowing to find the surviving Saiyan Prince said to be in the service of Lord Frieza and swear fealty to him. After at last finding him on Earth, however, Maze was tasked with scouring the galaxy for other survivors of Planet Vegeta's fall and returning them to the planet to rebuild their people in an unexpected form. Biography Son of Survivors Maze's father, Cobb, was a member of the Saiyan Royal Guard—an organization of Saiyan warriors tasked exclusively with protecting the royal family and estates of King Vegeta. As the organization was thoroughly loyal to the king, its members were party to his conspiracy to rebel against Lord Frieza, and many joined King Vegeta's Elite when the conflict finally began. Cobb, however, had been among those assigned to a distant planet to maintain the security of a vacationing palace owned by King Vegeta, and when recalled to fight at their king's side, the detail was to their great shame too late. With the death of his liege and fall of his planet, Cobb joined the rest of his Royal Guard detail in attempting to avenge their people, but before so much as reaching their system were intercepted by Team Dodoria. Wounded early in the battle, Cobb abandoned his team and fled using one of the king's royal starships, going into hiding as a fugitive of Frieza's galactic empire. Haunted by the shame of leaving his comrades to die, Cobb chased any rumor he could find of other surviving Saiyans rather than go to ground, and as such frequently came into conflict with soldiers of the Frieza Force. Despite setback after setback as his leads proved false or led only to graves, his efforts finally yielded success upon rescuing a lowborn Saiyan woman named Grainne from her capture by the Frieza Force. In time, their relationship became romantic, leading to Maze's conception ten years after the fall of their homeworld. The strain of their lives on the run, however, had taken their toll on her, and Grainne died in labor as the natives of a planet who'd agreed to shelter them became the latest victims of Frieza's conquest. Though stricken with grief, Cobb was forced to flee once again, clinging tightly to the newborn child who represented the last link to his wife and his people. Thusly was much of Maze's young life spent, taking shelter with the charitable denizens on dozens of worlds, making friends as his father searched for Saiyan survivors, only to leave them behind as Frieza's armies fell upon them. The months aboard their ship in between were the most time Cobb spent with his son, during which he would tell stories of the Saiyan people; of the bold king who'd delivered their people, of the heroes who'd carved a new home for them, and of their fall. These stories, colored as they were by his father's point of view, would be the only knowledge Maze had about his own kind, and—while he often resented his father's absence—was always desperate to hear more about the beautiful world he would've been part of. Longing to meet more of his own people, Maze began pushing his father to let him help, but after years of fruitless efforts, Cobb seemed to look more towards keeping them safe from Frieza than poking their heads out. By Age 762, Cobb and Maze had been in hiding for nearly a year on Dorellon, a world on the border of Frieza's territory which had survived through submission to the empire, when a team of Frieza Force soldiers passed through. Lording their authority as representatives of Frieza over the Dorellians for their own gain, the soldiers happened to encounter Cobb in a bar and remarked upon his resemblance to Prince Vegeta, the leader of the last few Saiyans in Lord Frieza's army. News of the crown prince's survival was a shock to Cobb, but was eager to make his excuses and get out of the soldiers' sight. Informing his son they were packing to leave, Maze protested the soldiers might know more, but his father forbade accosting them. After years of stories about his people, however, the now teenage and hot-blooded young Saiyan naturally seized on the first concrete lead they'd had over listening his father. Confronting the Frieza Force soldiers alone, Maze brazenly announced himself as a Saiyan and demanded to know where his kin were. Surprised, but if anything amused, the soldiers took the opportunity which had fallen into their laps and made sport of pummeling the upstart boy, intending to beat him to death and return his body to Lord Frieza for a reward. Before they could finish their work, however, his father arrived, killing one of the soldiers and carried Maze to a rapid escape. Humiliated and furious, the soldiers judged the Dorellians as traitors for sheltering the Saiyans and began laying waste to the settlement they'd imposed on. Cobb, meanwhile, brought his son to their ship and prepared to relocate once again, only to be moved by the thought of friends they had made in the year since their arrival—who would now pay for the kindness they'd shown Cobb and his child with their lives. Returning alone, Cobb faced off against half a dozen warriors comparable to his own strength, holding nothing back and ignoring grievous wounds dealt to him. Recovering in their ship, Maze only managed to make out the flashes of distant energy blasts which slowed and were eventually silenced before he managed to crawl to the cockpit and fly to the scene. There, Maze found the bodies of Frieza's soldiers and his father alike, fallen in battle with one another. Blaming himself, Maze wept openly over his father's body until he was found hours later by the Dorellians and brought to a hospital to have his own injuries seen to. By the time he'd recovered, Maze understood he could never stay—his father's mission was incomplete, and the prince of Saiyans remained alive somewhere in the universe. Thanking his friends and hosts, Maze took his father's Royal Guard insignia and set out aboard the ship which had passed to him, flying headlong into Frieza's domain to find Prince Vegeta. While still only a teenager, Maze's beating at the hands of Frieza's common soldiers had taught him caution. Attacks and demands against his enemies would lead him to a quick death, but fortunately his power level was low enough to escape most notice as he traveled between star systems, a fact he used to his advantage as he searched for information leading to the Saiyan Prince. Unfortunately, the Frieza Force's military secrets were not so easily stolen, and Maze would spend years chasing the wake of the warlord's conquests and learning what he could from traumatized survivors. Venturing to so many inhabited worlds, however, Maze by necessity would make friends of the locals he bartered with for food, often trading his own strength as laborer, hunter, or even fighter in some instances. Many of those he met were warriors and sages of their own kind, with whom Maze furthered the training his father had given him in Saiyan fighting traditions and augmented them with the techniques of dozens of styles in time. By the time he reached 20, in Age 767, Maze was a capable warrior in his own right—though only at a middling level compared to officers of the Frieza Force—when he happened upon New Namek, and was brought to Grand Elder Moori upon revealing himself as a Saiyan. From him, Maze learned of the survival of not only Prince Vegeta, but also the warrior who had fulfilled the legend of the Super Saiyan, and their victorious struggle in overcoming Frieza. Filled with joy the quest Cobb had passed to him would finally be fulfilled, Maze set out for Earth almost as soon as the story had been recounted. An Audience with the Prince Powers Trivia *Maze's name is a play on the word "maize", a word for the vegetable corn. *Maze was conceived mostly in reaction to the ever-increasing scale of Dragon Ball, reaching new levels of power as its way of denoting importance. The intention behind Maze is to make a character important through raising interesting questions for the series and its characters without power levels. Category:Saiyans